Banians acted as intermediaries for European merchants in Bengal. They were highly influential in the eighteenth century but their importance waned thereafter. This article reexamines their role in the nineteenth century and argues that their importance persisted but evolved in response to changes in the Bengal economy and issues of contracting and governance. It shows that the banians remained a nexus between the local and global economies, facilitating a bidirectional transfer of knowledge. They enabled the development of innovative Indian business forms and contributed to the emergence of a diverse ecology of organizational forms and ownership in Bengal at the end of the nineteenth century.

Although Britain's electrification started with considerable technological and market advantages, it proceeded remarkably slowly and hesitantly. Using share-price data, this study investigates the conventional explanations for this disappointing outcome: notably, perverse regulation and competition from entrenched gas-light providers. It finds that these oft-cited factors had an imperceptible impact on the course of the British electrical industry's turbulent market launch in 1882. However, we show that, owing to the fledgling electrical industry's need for incessant experimentation, short-sighted, self-serving decisions by the management of the early British industry's most prominent firm squandered a well-funded start, with long-lasting adverse consequences.

This article examines the 1968 decision by the French mineral water company Vittel to use PVC packaging for its main product. This was the first time this type of packaging had been used for a mainstream consumer product. By examining the causes, manifestations, and consequences of this business decision, it aims to show how this model has spread and contributed to the creation of an environmentally damaging waste regime by abandoning deposit systems. The article also seeks to show, through this case, the importance of identifying social and institutional contexts to understand the trajectory of consumer products.

The essay examines the role of Christianity in premodern European capitalism, with regard to the city of Florence. It traces the formation of the historical construct and the influence of Werner Sombart's Der moderne Kapitalismus, a work much neglected nowadays in the Anglophone academy. The article seeks to historicize and contextualize faith and economy, to stress their fundamentally intertwined nature and more specifically how notions of “negotiation” and diriturra (moral Christian rectitude) connect the seemingly antagonistic sides, and connect also Florentine finance and business history, which are too often studied independently. It argues that Christian rectitude and service to the church (a noncynical quid pro quo) were conjoined with a calculated, reasoned profit motive--evident especially among papal bankers, a key sector of the Florentine economy.

This article examines the strategies employed by multinational banks to mitigate political risk following the onset of revolution in their host countries during the early twentieth century. It does so by exploring the activities of multinational banks in China during the Revolution of 1911 and its aftermath. This article first describes the measures that multinational banks took to maintain China's credit on foreign bond markets after the outbreak of revolution. It then examines how these bankers curtailed political instability by first withdrawing financial support from both the Qing government and the revolutionaries and then providing financial assistance to the new Chinese Republican government.

The political hazards that host country governments pose multinational companies are multifaceted and persistent. This study focuses on the experience of the Canadian subsidiary of British retailer W.H. Smith and Son in order to examine how host country policy can influence a multinational operating in the cultural industries. While bargaining models have previously provided the principal analytical lens for analyzing the interaction between multinationals and host governments, I argue that such frameworks lack the necessary nuance in order to explain fully the interaction between the Canadian government and W.H. Smith. In order to address the intricacy of these relations, it is necessary to integrate insights from new institutional economics with conventional bargaining frameworks.

The article is a rare investigation into multinational activity in a wealthy resource-based colonial economy toward the end of the first wave of globalization. It challenges the conventional wisdom that multinationals had a limited presence in pre-1914 Australia, where government loans and portfolio investment from Britain into infrastructural and primary industries dominated. Our new database of nearly five hundred foreign firms, from various nations and spread across the host economy, shows a thriving and diverse international business community whose agency mattered for economic development in Australia. Colonial ties, natural resources, stable institutions, and high incomes all attracted foreign firms.

The global expansion of British insurers in the nineteenth century has been a feature of insurance history that has highlighted the strategic nature of the multinational enterprise (MNE). The growth of the Australian colonies from the mid-nineteenth century attracted the interest of these overseas insurers. This article considers the challenges these firms faced and the way in which these trials were overcome. Effective networks were important in establishing a market presence in the Australian colonies. A combination of enterprise, luck, and resilience assisted in building these links. The experience of British insurers in the colonies sheds light on the processes of MNE expansion into markets beyond their range of tacit knowledge and expertise.

The first wave of globalization, from 1850 to 1914, is considered to be a period when global trade and investment increased at a steady pace, impacting on global economic growth. Yet that evolution was not consistent across all industries. This article explains why, during that period, global trade in wines and other alcoholic beverages was reversed. Apart from diseases that affected vineyards in the main wine-producing countries of the Old World, various factors in the New World—including local government incentives and the presence of consumers (immigrants) with acquired habits of consumption from European countries—created strong incentives for the imitation and adulteration of wines. This study looks at the strategies used both by the imitators in expanding their businesses and by the innovators to survive in institutional environments that were weak with regard to the protection of their intellectual property.

This article examines the history of the Royal Dutch Shell scenarios, from the first horizon scan exercise in 1967. It proposes that forward-looking scenarios were integrated in planning at Shell as tools for managing uncertainty in global time and space relations of oil after 1967. Specifically, the article proposes that Shell strategically used the scenarios to respond to arguments, emanating both from OPEC and from the Club of Rome, of oil as a limited resource. Shell used the scenarios to create images of a future oil market dominated by innovation, creativity, and sustainable solutions.

Scholars have long linked medieval and early modern public debts to the rise of capitalism. This article considers one prominent case study in the development of permanent public debt: late medieval Genoa. Previous scholarship has focused on financial speculation and markets for shares as central to how public debts functioned. However, by considering complementary types of sources, this article demonstrates that inheritance strategies and patrimonial considerations operated in dialogue with markets in the development of urban public debts, both in Genoa and elsewhere in Europe.

Silk manufacturing began in Lucca in the twelfth century and by the fifteenth century Italy had become the largest producer of silk textiles in Europe, nurtured by extensive domestic and foreign demand for the luxurious fabric. This essay explores the market for silk textiles, the organization of the silk industry, and the role played in it by guilds, entrepreneurs and their capital, and highly sought after artisans. Just as silk manufacturing was an important and lucrative business for entrepreneurs, this article argues, so was it a crucial strategic activity for the governments of Italy's Renaissance states, whose incentives, protections, and investments helped to start up and grow the sector with the aim of generating wealth and strengthening their respective economies.

How does politics affect private international lending? This article highlights the relationship between international banks, their home governments, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and international regulators during the years that preceded the debt crisis of 1982. Based on new archival evidence from different case studies, we find that the decisions of commercial banks to lend were largely based on the home governments’ preferences, competition, and the assumption that home governments and international organizations would provide lender of last resort functions to support borrowing governments. While previous works suggest the 1982 debt crisis was unexpected, we show that banks primarily reacted to the deteriorating macroeconomic situation in many emerging economies once the support of their home governments and the IMF became uncertain.

This article rethinks the relationship between trade and industry in the development of Indian capitalism, focusing on Tata, pioneers in textile and steel production. It shows how two little-known affiliated trading companies, R.D. Tata & Co. in Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Kobe, and Tata Limited in London, played a crucial intermediary role in securing financing and market access for the parent firm in Bombay while simultaneously increasing its exposure to the effects of global crises. Tata's ultimately dominant position in a protected national economy was due to the contingent failure of these trading companies rather than a foregone conclusion.

Multinational enterprises faced new political risks after World War II in the context of decolonization and the Cold War. The risks were particularly high in Asia between 1945 and 1970. Although the relevant literature has focused essentially on organizational innovation and strategic choices in explaining how firms dealt with these new political risks, this article explores the informal roles that governments of small, neutral countries played in supporting their multinationals abroad. Looking at the case of Nestlé in Asia, the article argues that the backing of the Swiss federal authorities was crucial for the company to overcome various kinds of risks and ensure a long-term presence in the region.